An Organised Start From Scratch

I honestly haven't touched any of my stuff in months, maybe not at all this entire year! I was just playing around with some loops and all of a sudden really miss it.

Now, what I've found is I never finish stuff because I move onto something new but then play around with old projects all the time. So I'm always bouncing between ideas but never finishing.

I was thinking of just deleting every project, as well as organising my samples and templates so I've got a fresh start. Anyone done this before? I was forced to do it once after a HDD failure and bloody hell, it was like a breath of fresh air. I may have to replicate that again. Every time I listen to something I can see the original idea but it just hasn't been done well enough from scratch and I find it daunting to go back and fix everything. I have more desire to start completely fresh.

Oh and that damn 3 hour challenge too. I need to get the Virus C and the NL2x onto that ASAP!

You should at least freeze or render the unfinished track if it has something cool and original in it, and put it in your iTunes library. Or you can collect a bundle of loops and charge people for them as a sample library in construction kit format.

Create 8/16 bar loops of all your unfinished tracks and import into an iTunes playlist. You are then free to rearrange the tracklisting and you may stumble upon a combination where 3 or more loops sound great together, as if sections of a whole track. Of course it will be easier if you compose or transpose all your loops into the same key.

Loops isn't a bad idea, but I'm afraid I'll just go back to using them and then get stuck again.
Maybe I can make a pack and then copy it onto an external so I'm not tempted to use them, at least not straight away.

i have about 200 gigs of unfinished stuff thats the nature of music. if somethings not working dont waste time on it, move on, you can always revisit it later .. sticking with stuff that just doesn't work is like driving a square peg into a round hole

Dont make loops, make songs.
Try to finish each song before you move onto the next.
Finishing tracks is a habit you have to get into IMHO. Compose/arrange/mixdown.
Each track you finish will improve you skills in each area.

If at the end of the track it isnt great it doesnt matter, you have learnt arranging, eqing, compression, production and importantly...how to finish a track.
Not every track will be good...that doesnt matter. At the end of the year you will have 20 finished songs and 6 might be killer...

Dont make loops, make songs.
Try to finish each song before you move onto the next.
Finishing tracks is a habit you have to get into IMHO. Compose/arrange/mixdown.
Each track you finish will improve you skills in each area.

If at the end of the track it isnt great it doesnt matter, you have learnt arranging, eqing, compression, production and importantly...how to finish a track.
Not every track will be good...that doesnt matter. At the end of the year you will have 20 finished songs and 6 might be killer...

I honestly haven't touched any of my stuff in months, maybe not at all this entire year! I was just playing around with some loops and all of a sudden really miss it.

Now, what I've found is I never finish stuff because I move onto something new but then play around with old projects all the time. So I'm always bouncing between ideas but never finishing.

I was thinking of just deleting every project, as well as organising my samples and templates so I've got a fresh start. Anyone done this before? I was forced to do it once after a HDD failure and bloody hell, it was like a breath of fresh air. I may have to replicate that again. Every time I listen to something I can see the original idea but it just hasn't been done well enough from scratch and I find it daunting to go back and fix everything. I have more desire to start completely fresh.

Oh and that damn 3 hour challenge too. I need to get the Virus C and the NL2x onto that ASAP!

its well worth it, i spend a good 2 days organizing all my loops and samples makes my overall workflow much quicker, I've now got into the habit of naming every track and sample inside a project correctly. With Abelton is great because if you every do a loop ect you can just export it in easily into a new project, so good description helps a lot.

Don't delete, absolutely not. Save them in a completely different folder. Amazing time capsule to open up and play again (even if the tracks are shithouse) and remember why and how you were producing songs the way you were say five years ago. Who cares if you're not finishing things anyhow, you're doing it for fun right?

I recently went through all my sample packs and deleted all the crap that I never have and never will use. Mainly drum and fx samples im talking about, deleted all the plugins I have never used and limited myself to a few and moved all my old projects onto an external hard drive so they are there if I need them but won't be playing around with them.

I like to do remix and sample pack comps, I know I would never win :p but they come with a deadline which is good for motivation and helps you get things done and you learn a lot along the way.

I never sit down with a clean slate and say right I am going to write a song today. I have ideas over a year old that I intend to make into full songs, a good idea is better than a fresh idea I reckon. I do look forward to finishing current projects and reformatting though.